“Be glad I have not,” Bluebeard said softly, his low voice rumbling like the thunder of a coming storm. “I could have visited you many times over the years and yet I have reserved this moment for a special need. I have come for a bride.”
A bride?
“The girl is promised to me,” Lord Fallowplains – Leonid – said, striding through the crowd toward Bluebeard. My eyes widened and my hand reached up to clutch my chest over my heart. I had not expected so much loyalty from a man who had only just met me. My father had chosen very well indeed.
So why was I still finding it so hard to take a breath?
Bluebeard smirked. “Well, now the promise is broken by the Law of Greeting. Be on your way, hale mortal.”
“I will not,” Leonid said, swallowing nervously. “It is my life for hers. You will not take her.”
He was within reach of Bluebeard now, arms crossed over his chest, squaring his stance, his round chin thrust forward. I had thought he was a large man when I met him, but he seemed small in front of Bluebeard, even though he had four inches at least on the Wittenbrand.
Bluebeard sighed and made an expression of distaste. “What is this? A duel? Over a woman not yet your wife? How horribly last century. I thought we’d moved past that. Haven’t we moved past that, Sparrow?”
One of the figures with him snickered unkindly.
Leonid cleared his throat. “I am offering a duel, yes.”
“No,” I said quickly. “You don’t need to do this for me, Leonid.”
He made a gesture to quiet me, and Bluebeard snarled.
“Do not silence my betrothed, mortal.” His hand shot out, grabbing Leonid by the neck and shook him so quickly that I hardly realized what was happening. Leonid’s large head snapped back and then forward like a doll in the mouth of a very large dog.
Princess Chasida screamed so loudly that I heard nothing else and her guards finally came to their senses, rushing forward to surround the royal family.
Bluebeard flung Leonid’s limp body aside and I struggled to see him. Was Leonid dead or merely unconscious? How had Bluebeard done that with just one hand? To a man larger than he was?
My hands flew up over my mouth and the little golden bell dropped to the floor, rolling across the shining marble to Bluebeard’s feet.
Bluebeard snatched the bell up, bouncing it on his palm like a toy. It rang every time it struck his palm again. Like a death bell signalling to the town that someone was gone.
Around me, people were shuffling backward, making the gap around me wider and wider. I looked to my own father and he looked back at me, sadness and resignation in his face. Resignation. That was what hit me so hard. What was he going to do? Was he going to try to step up and fight, too?
I shook my head at him, but he took a determined step forward.
I glanced at Leonid. He was very still on the ground. I wasn’t certain if he was dead – but he might be. I glanced back at my father pushing through the crowd, his face drained of blood. If I didn’t do something fast, that would be him, too.
“I will be your bride,” I said. The words had tumbled out of me so quickly that everyone seemed to freeze, listening. “I will be your bride and go from here with you. Only let me say goodbye to my family, and gather my things, and let there be a proper wedding before I leave these lands with you.”
Because if I was going to lose everything, I should at least be sure we were properly married and I was not to be a slave or a concubine.
“Done.” Was that sorrow I saw in Bluebeard’s eyes as they met mine? It must have been a shadow because his eyes immediately shifted to trickery as he turned to the King. “Go find whatever holy man you use and bring him here. There will be a wedding before the hour is gone.” He turned to his own men. “Sparrow, Grosbeak, gather her things and take them to our mounts. When the ceremony is completed, we ride.”
“This man was so unlucky as to have a blue beard ... Adding to their disgust and aversion was the fact that he had already been married to several wives, and nobody knew what had become of them.”
- Charles Perrault, Bluebeard,
1697 as translated by Andrew Lang in The Blue Fairy Book 1889.
Chapter Six
The King cleared his throat. I couldn’t even see him anymore behind all his guards. “By the Law of Marriage, you must spend at least one night with your new bride under the roof of her guardian. Since she is of my land, this castle may stand in stead of her home.”
Bluebeard waved a mocking hand. “Is it not night? Have we not spent it here beneath your roof? Why ask me to meet conditions that are already met?”
The King’s voice sounded strained. “We have laws, and you have laws. The Law of Greeting is where they meet. If you ask us to respect that law, we must respect all the laws.”
“This was not required of me the last time I came to claim what is mine.”
“A different man was King then. Perhaps he had less fortitude than I do. We will honor the laws. But we will not be dogs before you rolling in the mud. We have laws of our own and we will uphold them. Be ye noble or craven, of sound purpose or twisted, she will be your bride but only if you marry her properly.”
My legs felt weak beneath me. The realization that I was actually going to marry this man – that the King was negotiating that the marriage be legal and binding – was suddenly becoming far too real. I met my father’s eyes across the room, and I let one moment of my fear show, let him offer his strength in the shared misery in his own eyes, and then I dropped my hands from my mouth and stiffened my spine. I lifted my chin and forced my face into a calm expression. I could be sensible about this.
Bluebeard was here right now in the Court of Pensmoore. He had already killed my betrothed. My family would be next, and then the simpering girls from the workroom, and the King, and Queen, and Princess Chasida, who was having hysterics on the royal dais, and the soldiers and grooms and servants and everyone else. I had no doubt that he and the four others with him could accomplish that. No doubt at all. They wouldn’t swagger in here demanding brides – and talking to kings as if they were grooms – if they couldn’t enforce their will. Which meant that if I cared for my family and had compassion on these other people, if I cared for the stability of our nation, then there was only one sensible thing to do and that was to marry this foreign blue-bearded murderer and keep them all safe.
It was even a clever match. After all, I was the daughter of a very minor house, and quite dispensable, and he was a threatening foreign lord. A foreign lord of the Wittenbrand. He was one of the strange long-lived beings of legend who scared us in tales told on long winter nights. He was one of the ones rumored to steal children from their cribs and carry off grown women to be their wives. I paused at that thought.
Well now. It was hardly a rumor, was it? It was happening to me. Perhaps I’d been too quick to label things superstitions when they were not.
I’d barely finished the thought when my father and Rolgrin finally made their way to me.
My mouth was very dry.
“You don’t have to do this,” Rolgrin said as soon as they’d joined me. He shot a furious look at the Wittenbrand, his sword hand grasping at the empty spot on his belt. No one had worn weapons to the ball.
Bluebeard heard him and leaned toward us in a very feline way. One of his eyebrows quirked upward like he was going to share a delicious secret. “If she does not, then the Law of Greeting says that your kingdom is mine from the stones to the rooftops. Every speck of dust of this place will belong to me, and then I could still marry her – and every other woman in this land – for she would be mine, too.”
I shuddered.
“But then why have you never done this before?” Rolgrin demanded. He was young and furious, determined to protect me. I shot my father a worried look and he put a hand on my brother’s shoulder.
“Who says I have not?” Bluebeard asked. “I’ll take that man’s lying tongue.”
My eyes were
so wide now that they stung.
“Princess Margaretta,” I gasped. “You were the one who took her.”
“Was that her name?” Bluebeard asked indifferently. “Golden-haired round little thing, like that girl who wears our colors so boldly?”
He spared a glance for Princess Chasida and her bright blue dress. I almost thought I saw a glimmer of disgust on his face. He must not like to see mortals wearing his color without warrant.
“I hardly remember her,” he said indifferently, and Chasida shrieked in terror.
My father’s face grew whiter and I grabbed his other hand, hoping he would see sense.
“Girls are married all the time for the safety of their nations,” I whispered to him. “Usually they are princesses and not lower nobles, but it does happen. Even with people like us.”
I was surprised by a clinking sound behind me. To my shock, a pair of the King’s guards were there with Svetgin between them, locking him in manacles.
“What –” I gasped, and then the King’s guards moved fast, ripping my brother and father from me and chaining them with Svetgin. “What are you doing?”
I felt suddenly bereft.
It was the King himself who spoke. As his voice echoed out to me, I realized that the hall was emptying. The pretty girls in their dresses were gone. The band was nowhere to be seen. The Queen was helping the hysterical princess out of the room and most of the guards were going with them.
Chasida gave me a look of pity before she was escorted out the door. She had stayed silent. She had known the law. I didn’t know if she pitied me for being ignorant or being a fool but at least I hadn’t had hysterics in front of everyone. And that was something I could comfort myself with in the wee hours of the night.
“We don’t want anyone else to die, Izolda of Savataz. I’m sure you can understand that.” The King’s tone was not unkind. “It’s for the safety of your brothers and father. They cannot decide to do something heroic under lock and key. They cannot be killed by the Wittenbrand if we keep them from being fools. I promise you, fair lily, I will release them all the moment you and your bridegroom are out of sight of the city walls. Until then, they will be kept comfortable, but they will remain under guard.”
One glance back at the red in my father’s cheeks told me the King was wiser than I had guessed. My father had been planning to fight for me. Perhaps he had been waiting for the right moment or for Svetgin to join them so they would be three to five. Either way, in that moment I was grateful to the King. My mother would get to keep two of her three children and my father as well. This was better. Rolgrin was but seventeen and Svetgin only fifteen. They did not need to die for an older sister when they hadn’t even tasted life properly.
One death in exchange for their lives – and also the lives of thousands of others – was a small price to pay.
“As you say, my King,” I said respectfully, and he gave me a rueful smile. His craggy face and reddish nose looked almost comforting. Which was saying something. Truly, this was an odd day.
The King hadn’t left the dais. Now he gestured, and my family was carefully brought to one side below the dais.
“If we are to have a wedding, let us do it properly,” he said stiffly. “The bride’s family are on this side. And the bridegroom’s on this side.”
Bluebeard chuckled, still bouncing my golden bell on his palm like a cat playing with a toy.
“I do not think you wish to see my family, little King. They would give you nightmares that may kill you in your sleep.”
He rubbed his blue beard and considered me in a way that made me think again of a cat. This time, of one eyeing a mouse. I stood even straighter to show him I was no mouse. He smirked.
He could smirk all he wanted. I was not the one with a horrendous blue beard or the need to trick people into marrying me. I’d had someone who actually wanted to marry me.
I shot a guilty glance to where Leonid lay – lifeless – on the ground. I wanted to believe he had merely swooned. I was almost certain I was wrong.
He’d been a good man, though I’d barely known him at all. He hadn’t deserved to die honorably defending a woman he’d only just met. He deserved far better. What would his hold do now with no heir and no Lord? I felt a stab of worry for them, but I must not let that distract me. There was nothing I could do to help, and I knew the King would take care of them. He would install one of his best knights there to manage the hold and people, and in time the wound would heal. Though likely Leonid’s horses would miss him for the rest of their lives. I had a feeling that they were very attached to him.
“Gathering wool?” someone whispered in a rough voice at my ear.
I startled and turned with narrowed eyes to see the wicked glint in Bluebeard’s.
“I was mourning the death of my betrothed before marrying another. It seemed fitting. Especially since my new husband was his slayer.” I made my words icy cold.
“Is that who that was?” He said the words like they were maple candy he was turning over on his tongue. “Your betrothed. What a shame. You could have borne his gigantic babies.”
“You know he was,” I said acidly. “He told you so.”
“I wasn’t listening. I rarely bother listening to mortals. They speak and speak, but in the end, they just die before they’re even done talking,” he said, waving a hand languidly. “Speak to my riddle, fair mortal. What keeps you waiting until it dies?”
“Hope?” I asked.
He chucked in delight. “A better answer than mine. I was going to say ‘kings.’ Can we get on with this ceremony?”
“Yes,” the King said, and I saw the bitterness souring in his eyes – but there was relief there, too, and guilt whenever he glanced at my father. He knew how close he had come to seeing his own daughter wed this way. And he knew that he’d have no trouble from my father over it. My father was a loyal King’s man. He’d be loyal to the point of death. Even now. Even when his daughter stood substitute for the princess in a wedding meant to protect the kingdom.
Someone shoved an old man in a robe forward and I startled. I was too deep in my own thoughts. Had my heart ever sped this fast before?
He looked priest-like, but I wouldn’t know. We only had monasteries up in Northpeak and the monks only came out in the summer to sell honey mead and, three other times a year, to sing to us of holy things and perform marriage and death rites all in one big batch. They preferred to divide life into slices like a goodwife with a pie.
The old man tottered slightly, blinking as he looked around him.
“It’s a wedding, brother,” the King murmured.
“Ah yes,” the old priest said, “And we’ll do the traditional vows, of course.”
“No.” Bluebeard snapped the word. Behind him, his men shuffled like nervous horses.
Of course, he wouldn’t want to do traditional vows. There was no way this ravager of kingdoms and thief of maidens was going to promise fidelity to me.
“You promised the marriage would be legal,” the King prompted. “There must be vows.”
And for just a moment, I saw a glimmer of pain in my enemy’s eyes. Now, what was that? I had a mind to draw it out further and examine it. It could be useful in keeping me alive.
“I have never said vows before,” he said in a way that made me think of snakes hissing.
“But you will say them to me,” I said firmly. I didn’t need the king to stand up for me. I could stand up for myself. “Or we will not be wed.”
He looked at me for a very long time and behind him, one of the men spoke in a language I did not know. It sounded like a curse.
Bluebeard bit his lip and then said, “And what will you give me in return, mortal woman?”
“The same vows,” I said, my cheeks flushing. “You give me yours and I give you mine. Is that not what marriage is?”
There was a glitter in his strange cat’s eye, as if he’d never considered such a thing, and for a moment his hand strayed to the hilt
of his sword. My breath caught in my throat. I didn’t dare let it out. I had the feeling I was a heartbeat away from him drawing the sword and slicing my throat, but after a moment he tilted his head slightly to the side and then he laughed.
He smirked. “I will offer the vows of my people.”
Behind him, one of his men shut his mouth with a loud click and the other gasped.
I darted a glance to him. There were three remaining, as one had gone to gather my things. All three wore stony expressions on their beautiful faces. They were all of swarthy of skin and hair with brilliant blue cat’s eyes – but while their coloring matched and their beauty was similar, each had his own appeal. One was a woman. One had a huge scar that twisted up from either side of his mouth. My future husband seemed taller than the rest of them – though he was not – and with his blue beard and a scar that cut down across one brow, he looked the roughest and cruelest of all.
“Then let us say our vows together,” the priest burbled happily. “The groom may begin.”
Bluebeard was staring at me like I should realize how significant this was. He leaned forward slightly, looking as if he might leap at any moment. Seeing as it was my wedding, I was very cognizant of its importance.
“As long as rivers run and moon shines, as long as the earth has bones and death has claws, as long as the ages pass and fail – that long shall I be husband to you. Flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone you will be. Spirit of my spirit, heart of my own heart, fall what may, we shall be one. Your days shall be mine and your happiness my own. My body I dedicate to none other. The bounty of my wealth is yours. If ever it be otherwise, may I waste away with sickness and may famine eat my strength, and may my enemies overtake me, and siphon from me the blood of my life.”
Well, that was somewhat extreme.
Perhaps I should have been horrified. A smart girl would have been. But mostly, I was just fascinated. This vow was deeper than any I’d heard before. It seemed to match the tightness that had surrounded my heart since I spoke my greeting. It was just as immobilizing. Just as binding. Just as deadly terrifying.
Fly with the Arrow: A Bluebeard Inspired Fantasy (Bluebeard's Secret Book 1) Page 4